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Thursday, July 22, 2010

Thursday, July 22, 2010

According to this survey I'm about to make up, 74% of us don't get enough fiber in our diets. Unless you're British. In which case you don't get enough fibre. And you spell things wrong.

Fortunately, the bakeries of the world are here to help.

I think we'll call this Faeber.

I DO believe in Faeber. I do, I do!!

TRUE STORY: Last week our cat Tonks decided to eat a piece of ribbon because she is, by all accounts, an idiot. Now if you're a cat owner, you know that she will most likely end up dragging a two foot piece of poo-coated ribbon across our carpet while we sleep, blissfully unaware of the impending cleaning bills.

Which makes me wonder: Does the same thing happen with kids?

Admit it: you just had a mental image of a bunch of toddlers scootching their butts across the carpet.

Now, of course, if plastic is your fiber of choice, then have I got a cake for you!

It's like a cartoon colonic.

In fact, bakers really seem to be embracing the Dollar Depot movement: (Heh. "Movement.") Case in point: Ashley ordered a little boy's cake, something appropriate for a first birthday.

Aaaand this is what she got:

...'cuz nothing's more appropriate for a one-year-old than twenty-two individual choking opportunities.

"No, Palmer, Sweetie, you can't eat that. Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that. No! Not that! Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that. Whoah! Definitely not that. Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that. Maybe th...no, not that, either.

Update from john: Just so we're clear, we are watching Tonks 24/7 and the minute something seems off, we'll take out a second mortgage and head to the vet. Until then, if you need me, I'll just be over here sifting poop...

are you SURE that last cake was professionally done? I mean, if you can look past all the flotsam (which, I'll admit is a challenge in and of itself), the icing job is TERRIBLE. It's not even remotely smooth!

ribbons, cats/toddlers, and poo... laughing so hard i am crying! thank goodness i am making my son's 1st birthday cake on saturday...no flotsam allowed (of course, it won't be "professional" - but at least he'll be able to eat it).

btw, i can ~kind of~ understand the dora cake...they wanted to make sure that every kid got a piece of plastic.

That last cake seems to be every mother's solution to choosing a theme for the party - I can count at least 4-5 different themes happening on that cake. And for that, they should be congratualted, and then flogged for cake ruining.

Oh God, a few weeks ago my weird little dog ate fabric ribbon, dust, more fabric, and barfed it all up on the floor. I didn't know until my mom walked by in the living room and said: "WTH!?!"really loudly. It looked like fire damaged then soaked in water old newspaper.

#4 - Maybe it's these old eyes, but I'm having a hard time reading "Happy 11st birthday"?? Are there TWO 1's in that? What IS the line in front of 1st?

Overall - the cakes remind me of birthdays long past children who each demanded a piece of flotsam as a party favor. These decorators MUST have been asked to provide enough to go around for the entire neighborhood. Please? Please tell me there really is a reason?

~~Di

WV - pinses -- the Little Birthday Pinces asked for all her fairy court to have their own piece of fibre to take home from the party.

I think the extra line in front of the 1 on that last cake... look closely. It looks like they drew a bubble number one. For some reason I can't fathom. It IS probably a 1, because you can see how the shapes are connected. Though it looks more like a tetris piece than a number.

The Hershey Kisses are still wrapped on the Tinker Bell cake. How about the mental imagery of the year the dog got into the bag of Kisses and ate them, foil & all. After panicked calls to the emergency vet, he survived, and for days afterwards we enjoyed the way the foil bits made his poo sparkle in the sunshine.

One of my cats, Pete, swallowed two feet of ribbon once, and no, it did not result in ribbon laced with poo across the floor. Instead it resulted is $1000 vet bill for the surgery to remove it. Dogs and people, according to my vet at the time, can pass anything (presumably even the odd plastic toy) but cats cannot. String and ribbon have since been banned from my house.

Last cake...just SO wrong on so many levels. "Just make sure you have 911 on speed dial."

Ugly green camo, severed head and feet,Heavy on the sprinkles, isn't that a treat?Barbie, poo, and belly, gangsta, meat,Hide it with flotsam, they'll think that's neat!Singin'We will, we will wreck you!We will, we will wreck you!

My theory is that the founders of American English were slightly dislexic as are many of the wreckerators. It would explain a lot.BTW I adore that you named your cat Tonks. That really is a great cat name.

The pitchfork wielding citizen is nice, but I prefer the lady clown/circus performer who is assisting planes to land. The race car, dump truck, boat, and earth-moving equipment are insufficient; a plane is needed.

What is the large blue object at the front of the cake? A surfboard? A sarcophagus?

Remember when that guy posted the flickr stream of the party he had where everyone brought something with which to decorate the cake? And he kept a running tally on a whiteboard behind it? The last cake reminds me of that. Except it's not a joke.

It should not take longer to remove plastic crap off a cake than it does to actually consume said baked good.

By the way, does the bakery provide a count of how many plastic items are on the cake so the buyer can make sure they are all off before eating? The fairy cake has odd greenery as well as a convention full of Tinkerbell clones. Do they supply a scrub nurse with each cake to keep count?

Oh oh, my grandson took a party opportunity to scootch across the kitchen floor, saying "Look mom, I am doing the Nini" - the cat's gracious move. They both most have ingested lots of ribbon. So glad you explained it all so well.Norine

second, please don't let (g)your cats chew/eat/swallow strings or ribbons or yarn. it can get twisted in the intestines, which can end either a) espensively or b) poorly. (sorry. it's a little peeve of mine.)

BOSS: Don't sweat it, Bud. All you have to do is slap some icing on it, then we'll stick on so much junk that it won't look like a cake at all. Just leave enough room to wedge in the plastic "Happy Birthday" sign and we're done.

What happened to SpongeBob's FACE?! I'm going to have a very upset 6yo when he sees that SpongeBob has lost all his facial features, especially seeing as how he didn't really have all that many other features...

It's interesting that you consider the British spelling of fibre to be "wrong", since most of the English-speaking world would consider the American spelling of this word to be "wrong". Perhaps it is more politically correct to say the Americanized spelling of the word fibre is fiber, since the Americanization of many words occurred long after the British established their lexicon.

Hey Jen! Brits, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Jamaicans, Bermudans, Bahamians, Trinidadians, Tazminians, the Irish, Scottish, South Africans, Nigerians, Kenyans, Zimbabwians... et al. We ALL eat fibre, write cheques, go to community centres and theatres, love our neighbours, and are very colourful people. In other words, almost the whole world, other than the U.S., eats fibre! Love you and your outstanding website immensely! You are hilarious and we love the way you spell, and the way you take jabs at other countries in the interest of good natured blageury!

This isn't apropos the cakes, but do be careful with cats and ribbon/yarn. The way a cat's digestive tract is set up, it's very easy for bits of string to get caught, and then when the cat tries to pass it the string can rip through their digestive tracts.

I don't mean to tell you this for shock value or anything, but I have a cat who tries to eat yarn (and as a knitter this is a problem) and my vet gave me a huge warning about this.

Wilson: Sir, we have a problem. The Tinkerbell is spawning rapidly. 73% more than we anticipated and they're becoming aggressive. We could only be moments away before an attack. What should we do Sir!?

I love the last cake. the blue car has an alien jumping out of it, threatened by a dude with pitchfork. he should turn around and check out the giant lizard and tiny shiny dinosaurs coming up behind him.

then Sisyphus, the soccer player, must be trying to heave that giant soccer ball up the sticky icing mountain of cake. what an unfortunate purgatory for him.

now what's the guy in the orange hat up to? he's hiding out like he's doing something criminal. maybe he's about to detonate the top of the cake? oops. too late.

re the children's sparkly bottom trail: - I HAVE been there when our toddler ate a bauble (hey, it's red, up a tree, it must be an apple). Later I found myself musing on things you never say before you're a parent: "Florence, stop dragging your bum along the carpet! We have a dog for that!"

Apparently my very un-bright cat Ferris once ate about 10 feet of ribbon, maybe more. I know this because we came home from a play to find endless poo-covered ribbon wound around all the legs of our kitchen chairs and table. I can only imagine the look of alarm on poor, stupid Ferris's face as he tried to figure out what was following him.

I believe the guy with the pitchfork is not a farmer. In the enlarged format, he bears a remarkable resemblance to Vladimir Lenin. Why Lenin is on a birthday cake, I do not know. And why it was iced with spackling compound ... well that's just wrong.

Sorry - going to add to the cat/ribbon warnings. If you see the ribbon hanging out of your cat's bum do not pull on it. The ribbon can get stuck higher in their digestive tract and when you pull the end it will either collapse their bowel or rip it apart.

My cat ate a small (4 inches?) piece of silk ribbon last year. I gave her some hairball gel and it seemed to help her pass it. It did take a couple of days though.

Good luck - hopefully you'll have the same non-vet-visit outcome as I did.

Our cat once ate a chenille-ribboned toy - she was about 6 months old at the time. The memory I have of that event is my husband chasing a terrified cat through the apartment, trying to remove the last 6 inches of poopy chenille string hanging out of her rear. The cat was tearing around terrified because it kept hitting her back legs and she couldn't get away from it. We refer to this incident in our life with the cat as the "poopy butt-dangler". Still makes us laugh every time! :D

FYI: This is the same cat that got spooked by her reflection in the mirror and sprinted in the opposite direction, only to run into the wall head-first at full speed. Our theory is brain damage. LOL

man...i had cats who ate ribbons all the time. We couldn't figure out how they were getting them since we were careful to throw it all away after unwrapping gifts! And then we discovered the loose board in the door to our attic space that was loaded with Christmas wrapping. Idiot cats.

And RE: the people who are chastising Jen et al for being so careless as to let their cat eat ribbon. Look, it's not like they sit at home each night and purposefully feed the cat ribbon. Ribbon is crack for cats. They have suppliers and a whole system of commerce to support their habit. You try to keep it out of their jaws but SOMEHOW they seem to always find a scrap of it somewhere. So ease up, the cat will most likely be fine, and I'm sure if something went wrong they'd handle it.

Also, also: Jen et al, don't feel like you have to explain yourselves to the world about naming your cat Tonks! My husband and I named all of our cats after Stargate characters: Thor, Vala, and Dr. Daniel Jackson ("Jackie" for short). We also have a cat named Coco, but she came to us with that name.

"Butt scootching toddlers" sounds like a country line-dance. Also reminds me of a message an anonymous student wrote on one of my desks: "I have butt worms." No one would sit at that desk the rest of the year.

I used to make little ribbon bows for my bald-headed baby girl and glue them to her head with Elmer's school glue (washes right out at bath time - don't call DCFS). One day, I had her dressed and ready to go, bow and all. I got myself ready and came back to pick her, but no bow! I couldn't find it anywhere. While changing her diaper days later, I'm horrified - convinced she has tapeworm, until I remember the missing ribbon.

If you have a cat, you have or will at some point witness ribbon poop. We call it "gift wrapped" in our household. No, it's not good for them, but it's also not something you just let happen. Cats, like toddlers, have a way of finding exactly what you don't want them to find. It's what they do.

Ok someone must want to choke children putting all of that *ahem* garbage on top of the cake. And I love how all the fairies are hiding the spelling of the birthday girl lol. I couldn't even tell what the name was. Boy what a waste of cake. Hiding all their errors behind choking hazards is just evil of them lol.

Read all the way to end of post to see if anyone had commented on the fact that the last cake's sprinkles are in yellow and brown - and I get to be the first! Puts a new spin on "sprinkles".

Also, my Great-Aunt Verna went a couple degrees of magnitude past jillb-ilslp. She would take her bald daughter out with ribbon bows taped to her head - bows which had their knots embellished with the glued-on heads of thumbtacks. Whenever anyone asked "How do you keep the bow on?", she would point and answer; "With the thumbtack of course!" And I share her genes...

I once saw a piece of ribbon hanging from my cat's mouth. Like a good owner, I decided she shouldn't eat it, so I pulled it out....only it just kept coming. Apparently she had swallowed the rest of the roll of ribbon... I pulled out about 10 feet of ribbon. She sat there' patiently, while I gagged...not nice...

That first birthday cake looks like the cake we let my son decorate for himself one year. My mom made a plain chocolate sheet cake, and he added a plastic merry-go-round and all sorts of other flotsam.

"Admit it: you just had a mental image of a bunch of toddlers scootching their butts across the carpet."

They were riding carrots.

Incidentally, as I read about your cat's meal of ribbon and the question regarding whether baby feces could also have a long string of ribbon in them, I glanced over at my daughter, who just learned to crawl, and found her trying to eat a long piece of yarn. I suppose she wanted to find out, too.

You bring back such memories, memories of the year my cats ruined Christmas. One knocked down the tree, which smashed the antique glass ornaments my grandma had just days before given me because, in her words, "you're so sentimental and I know you'll take good care of them." And the other ate a bunch of ribbon off the presents and subsequently covered our living room with bloody hairball/ribbon vomit, which had shredded his esophagus on the way out and required a day-long, wallet-emptying trip to the vet. I love cats.

Cats see ribbon, cats see toy. I don't know that they generally mean to eat it either, it's simply fun to chew. Elastic is great fun as a cat toy too. It bounces but the pieces to get slowly shorter which is a little strange. Like anything you watch your cat anxiously but chances are if they've chewed up the ribbon well enough (and yes they can and do chew it up) then it'll simply be another thing to laugh at.

It's not just cats and dogs. Our sulcata friends soend the winter living indoors at Miss Ami's, and her kids aren't always good about picking up their toys. We still remember when the largest swallowed the yarn part of someone's necklace from Sunday School, so that dangling out of her mouth was a paper medallion proclaiming "Jesus loves me!"

Just so you know, DO NOT try to pull the ribbon free if a little (or even a lot) projects out the back of the cat. The ribbon can kink and perforate intestine if tugged on. You are doing the right thing with watchful waiting. Otherwise, just grit your teeth and take him to the vet if he is straining.

Yes, it happens with kids- my sister ate tinsel from the Christmas tree one year, so the stories my mom could tell....and usually does, while we're eating spaghetti. I think I'll just have a piece of bread...

I know I'm late to the party on this, but I just discovered it not too long ago, and in addition to checking new posts, I'm also going day by day through the old ones...

ANYway...

I feel your pain RE: Tonks here... my kitten is addicted to plastic shopping bags... seriously... I keenly felt the shame the night I came home, saw him running in tight circles, and laughing b/c I thought he was chasing his tail... then the horror when I realized that what he was chasing was a 4" long poo-covered plastic scrap... didn't even wait to find a paper towel... but I did immediately run to the bathroom for a 10 minute hand wash after that...

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